Zee Linden says only 10% to 15% of Second Life user hours are attributable to bots, yet I have the darndest time finding conversation. It hasn't always been this way. When I signed up in September 2006 I got drawn into conversation everywhere I went. I added to my friends list daily. I occasionally stayed up until 6am chatting.
I want to know why it isn't still like that.
I don't think it's a matter of degree or perception or nostalgia. It's a night-and-day difference. If you have social places you'd like to suggest I visit, I thank you, but you're missing the point. Second Life used to be friendly and lively everywhere. Now you have to know where to look for social contact. What happened? What does the (virtual) world look like to newly-arrived residents?
Green Dots is a project of Anya Ristow to find out what people are actually doing in Second Life, and to get a good measure of how many people are actually at their keyboard. The project is named after the green dots that represent people on the map. It'll work like this...
I'll choose places on the map to visit, pretty much at random. I will greet people that I find, but I won't push them into conversation. I'm visiting as an observer. I'll be listening in both text and voice chat, and I'll participate in chat when I find it. Are groups of people actually engaged in conversation, or are they bots and campers? Of course I won't know for certain and there will always be people taking a pee break or in private IM, but I should get a good feel for just how much socializing is going on.
This project began with a post to the Second Life forum asking where the humans hang out. Soon after making the post I started visiting random places and reporting what I found. I've moved that reporting here. It's not likely to be interesting reading. This will just be the documentation to back up any conclusions I reach.
